Malaria

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The 1st World Malaria Day will be observed in the country today as elsewhere across the globe to create awareness among people about the preventable disease that affects around 60,000 people every year in Bangladesh, while more than 500 patients die due to the disease. The outbreak of malaria borne by female Anopheles mosquito in the country is highest at 70 upazilas of 13 districts including Cox's Bazar, Bandarban, Rangamati, Khagrachhari, Mymensingh, Sherpur and Kurigram. Sources said malaria kills around 10 lakh people every year in the world.

This paper identifies paradigmatic shifts in the conceptualisation of fevers in British Ceylon, from agues and fevers in the early 1800s and fevers of particular regions in the mid-1800s to a powerful notion of malaria in the early 1900s. In the early colonial records, agues and fevers were seen primarily as a threat to European visitors to the tropics, including the colonisers. In contrast, the fevers of specific regions were identified as localised ailments endemic among the local population and somehow connected to the specifics of local ecology and the indolent nature of the natives.

The government is worried that malaria might spread among the Indian troops deployed along the India-Bhutan border. It has started providing soldiers with insecticide-treated mosquito nets and mosquito repellents. During the past five years, at least 50 army and paramilitary troopers have died of malaria in Assam. Mosquitoes have also affected militants, forcing them from their hide-outs. A retired chief engineer of the state's public works department, who was kidnapped by the United Liberation Force of Asom, died of malaria last week.